We had class yesterday. North America in the 19th century. Transcendentalism, frontier and the pioneer spirit.

I live in Manila. I am a college instructor. Lately, shifts in our educational system have made teaching more demanding, shifting more pressure for professors to document the learning curve….

Exams have to be measurable, do-able, reasonable. Work progress, predictable. No homework on weekends. Be mindful of students with special needs. Meanwhile, I also need to keep researching and studying as well.

In college, I was taught to think outside of the box. That, if I wanted to soar or at least make sense of this existence, I needed to expect problems before they happened. Teachers could flunk me on the basis of being asleep in class… never mind if I had to stay up late to complete assignments. Asking why my grade was low was such a difficult thing to do because I needed to figure this out on my own.

As a teacher now, I need to remember that I simply facilitate the discussion. There are no wrong answers… or maybe there are… just don’t make them feel horrible about it. Classroom discipline is needed, and this is my weak point. I forget that most of the time, students are not as interested to learn as they are to get the highest grade with the least effort.

I was trained to assume that nothing worthwhile ever comes easily. This meant, taking the brunt from the boss to staying quiet because it would be rude to speak up. You get to speak when you have established yourself somehow, or at least have a good backer.

Everyone has an opinion now, and curtailing that chance to speak– in any way — is offensive and a disregard of an individual’s rights.

They are very particular about rights; I hear nothing about taking responsibility.

I became a teacher, dreaming of a Manila that would be more intellectual. A place where conversation could take place without anyone getting hurt or dying. Where emotions could be safely kept in order so that the other can be heard better. I believed that teaching would be the best way to reach young minds, and was eager to share what I knew about the world so far.

I dreamt of Emerson, the pioneers, the spirit that pushed a civilization forward while they pushed others aside. They achieved their goal of changing the world, including mine. They became part of my ruined country’s history, they are still the gods to us, and that land is still where many Filipinos hope to find better futures.

After class yesterday, a student expressed her disappointment with her drink. She asked if I felt the same sometimes when the drink I bought did not meet my expectations or feel worth its cost.

There were so many disruptions, unexpected changes, political events… to an extent, it almost appeared absurd that many of these things were even happening. I’m not going to dwell on these things in this post, however.

While there were many instances for me to just give up and accept defeat, there were also insights and opportunities that gave me the privilege to enjoy life and what else it had to offer. Perhaps because of the resolutions I made for 2017, I had subconsciously decided to focus on my own challenges and duties than on what is going on in the internet world or what the media would report. There was just so much that needed to be done, that it became clear that there really was nothing that I could do— as much as I hoped that I could— for these events outside and far away from me.

All I had was my community, my immediate circles, and myself to deal with.

In hindsight, that’s actually a lot of influence right there. I don’t mean social media influence either, but actual interaction. The need to be in the moment and to absorb what can and cannot be done with my limited time.

Because of the challenges that 2017 presented to me, I realise that 2018 should be about focusing on what needs to be done… to rebuild boundaries and to challenge myself to say no and accept that I will be criticized for my new behaviour.

I think I got a taste of what this challenge would mean, just this past week. It takes a while for people to get used to a “new you”, when they’ve been used to a version of you that they didn’t really need to get to know or to take care of… someone who was fun to be with and agreed to everything that needed to be done. Most especially, someone who used to change themselves readily to fit into any given situation.

Now that I’m learning to say “no”, or to offer some resistance to things I actually don’t want to do, it’s been more obvious that people are surprised by this behaviour.

While it’s made more relationships a little rocky, compared to before, I’ve seen that it also brought out the people who are truly friends. By this, I mean the people who respect me as I am, rather than how I make them feel all the time. People who share common interests but also common values with me.

I’ve also realised how many friendships I had made and kept out of necessity. It’s eye-opening for me that I’d give so much of my time and effort for this level of friendship, too. I’m not saying that gave more, either (I never thought it should be a competition of affection) but that I sincerely did believe that I valued them as individuals. For that reason, though, a lot of times I did give up my own individuality.

I think 2017 had to teach me about expectations. Both mine and others’ expectations of me. There is no doubt that everyone has expectations, but it’s not very often that people know what they actually want… they’re more likely to criticize or comment on things that did not meet their expectation.

This 2018, I begin my resolutions again… keep at trying to be a better version of me even if I don’t appease everyone all the time. At the same time, know when I need help and have to ask for it.

2017 is coming to a close, and we’re back to that time of the year when everyone has to re-assess the things that they’ve been doing and where they wanna go in preparation for the coming new year.

Along with these preparations, I’ve downloaded the manga version of Marie Kondo’s (Konmari) “The Art of Tidying Up” and finished reading the whole thing overnight. The next day, I felt this urge to begin reviewing the things in my room, and how much I needed to clean up. This was also the day before I was heading out to Japan with my family and preparations for the trip had pre-occupied my mind more than anything. The cleaning was a welcome break from strategising and managing tempers.

In college, I didn’t really see cleaning as something therapeutic. It wasn’t until grad school that I realised how relaxing it was (sans the scrubbing and sorting and dust bunnies, of course). Reading Konmari’s method has given me an even deeper perspective on how to tidy up, and as she claims no one has gone back after they tried her method of cleaning.

A lot of it has to do with her approach to integrate the act of cleaning with why we keep things. Through her method, you can also imagine why she usually allots two weeks for the whole cleaning-up process (of course, it also depends on how much cleaning needs to get done). From the easiest category (papers, everyday items) to the toughest (things of sentimental value), one must reflect on the significance of the item in their present life and if it should be part of the future that they want for themselves. It sounds like a tall order, but once you get into the system, you’ll find yourself losing track of time. In my case, it felt like a presentation of my past year, and previous years— how far I’ve come and how much I’ve changed. And, on the funnier side, how some things about me have remained the same.

In the end, all that cleaning taught me how to embrace both good and bad parts of myself, while staying hopeful for the road ahead. Funny how cleaning can be such an eye-opener!

When I was in high school, I dreamt that someday I would be a teacher. An inspiring one. The kind that made you nervous to turn in your work if it was done sloppily. The kind that made you want to do more and read more.

I also hoped to be a writer. A novelist. Someone who could string words together and make otherwise unrealistic worlds into familiar ones for anyone who needed to expand their imaginative boundaries.

I believed that, when I grew up, all I needed was a laptop to write down all these stories and to keep working on my writing.

Today, I realize that I have become a teacher, but not the scary kind. I’d like to think that I inspire some (though obviously not all) to keep learning about the world around them. I have also a handy little laptop, which is a lot lighter than the one I had hoped to buy back in college.

But my dreams have also changed… and being both teacher and writer have become such huge responsibilities that it scares me sometimes to think to even get published with my real name on the cover.

I wonder a lot of times how people can publish topics which seem so trivial, awkward or even awful in writing style. But I cannot even imagine giving one criticism because of the fact that their being published is leagues ahead of my fear of setting anything onto a page.

Every September is a good time to go shopping for books. Every year I look forward to the Manila Book Fair, along with sales in many different local book stores. Being based in Manila, I have to admit that I’ve felt very limited in what book stores I can go to and which ones can offer a cheaper price. Not to mention, the titles which usually grab my attention are not usually available in most branches and might be more economical to order online.

Over here, it’s easy to see that preferences in readership range from badly-written romance novelletas, to romantic-horror fiction, to self-help books by celebrities. A quick google search of local bookstores’ bestsellers will easily show this.

I take it as a sign that, over here, the reading preference has not only been price-based, but also based on how well titles can offer some release from daily life. In a highly-stressful capital like Manila, reading classics is a conscious and rare choice. Understandably, reading Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” while on the MRT, could easily launch one into existential depths when one has to walk because the train broke down.

If there’s any positive note to books and readership over here in Manila, in the past years, one thing has been constant– bookstores double as libraries. So far, I think it’s quite a welcome sight to see that Fully Booked has placed signage that it’s all right to remove the plastic and browse through the books. In an informal interview I conducted a few years back, one book-seller from another popular bookstore said that they had to cover books in plastic because of the cost it incurred to have so many damaged books– mostly due to readers who decide to finish the book and not buy it.

Contrast this to the second-hand books that I found in Japan. Our group was brought to the bookstore block of Jimbocho in Tokyo. We spent 4 to 5 hours looking at the collections of spotless secondhand books (I really wondered if they were even read). Some books went back to the 80’s, some even further. In many of those bookstores, there was a cafe inside, or right beside, for readers who wanted to take time to have coffee or tea while reading through their purchased books.

The myriad collection of books was not the only thing that astounded me while I looked through the books in Jimbocho. What caught my interest more was the amount of care that went into keeping books organized, and how readers made sure to return books properly.

While so many second-hand books and bookstores exist within Manila, with books priced dirt-cheap, often times it’s because you get what you paid for. I have yet to find a bookstore that has a cafe that allows readers to bring books and browse through them while having a dessert or a cup of coffee. I’m also not sure if the reason for this is because the local culture will take anything for free if it’s presented as an opportunity– even if it means bankruptcy for the business.

Inasmuch as I didn’t want to believe that the Philippines “is not a reading culture”, having seen the reading culture of Japan really gave me perspective on how different our priorities are. While we were browsing through books in Jimbocho, I’d notice businessmen stopping by to browse through some technical books (engineering / sciences). Also, while there were a number of bookstores on manga, I had to learn how naive I was, and realize that there were specialty bookstores depending on what genre you were interested in.

Not only was having a “reading culture” about a wide readership, but a discernment of what to fill one’s mind with. And, with Japan, this ranged from the simple to the most complex of topics and genres.

The curiosity and the ability to acquire knowledge was so available and accessible while I was in Tokyo, that now I feel so limited being back in Manila and figuring out how to get safely from one library to another. It took me a while to re-think how much I thought I knew just because I thought I had found enough books locally… only to see that the subject had been written on extensively and archived in Japan.

It’s both exhilarating and frustrating at the same time. This must be a common feeling for a scholar though… and I have only begun.

Every now and then, I still dream about that bookstore tour. I still recall the wall-to-wall books, the scrolls that were for specialty scholars, the art books that cost a fortune for a young worker like myself. But most of all, I miss that natural curiosity and love for further learning that filled that area. THAT was a reading culture, and I still hope for a Filipino readership that could reach such levels without the class-based limitations.

Pain comes in different forms, but suffering means pain that needs to be endured. It implies that suffering is not inflicted upon others, and is more likely to be recognized and endured in solitude.

There are also instances when it is a solitary experience, and other times it is endured with a collective.

Nonetheless, we become aware of our suffering, regardless of the levels of pain that instigated it… and perhaps for that reason, it makes sense why not everyone will acknowledge your suffering as “bad enough”.

There is one thing that I’ve been thinking about suffering, and mostly because of Viktor Frankl’s work explaining Logotherapy in Man’s Search for Meaning…

that is, while we keep trying to find reasons why we must suffer, the lack of finding purpose in our suffering easily turns it into a source of anxiety.

I don’t also mean that one must invent positive and feel-good reasons to offer a “purpose” for their suffering. Rather, it might be more purposeful if, in light of the suffering we endure, we think of the good that can still come out of it.

That, regardless of our own decisions or the control that we have over the situation, all we can truly do is to avoid making the same mistakes and to keep moving forward.

In this way, suffering becomes a tool for self-improvement and reflection, rather than a consistent source of existential anxiety and angst.

Through the pursuit of making meaning out of your suffering, soon enough, those wounds will heal too— you’ll see. The world is such a big place, and you have so much to see outside of your own inner world.